Windows XP Taskbar disappeared, VIRUS HELP!

taskbarAug 12, 2009, 10:07 PM

Help! I got some malware from a random ad.facebook pop up. That is, I think that's where it came from. I've remedied two of the three problems. One, was DSC.EXE was infected and would show 15-30 of them in the task manager and sucking up all the RAM. I uninstalled Dell Support Center and it is gone.

Two, the Mcafee virus scan was disabled so I fixed that with superspyantiware.

Third, my taskbar disappears soon after entering my user. You see the little icons loading then it disappears. I can press Ctrl + Esc to get the start menu up and everything is working normally but the taskbar is gone.

I've search on google and dong hijackthis and regcure and everything else I can think of including XP Repair install. But none of them has fixed the problem.

I've end process the explorer.exe in task manager and did new task run explorer.exe and it still doesn't do anything. I think the malware embedded itself into the explorer.exe or the svhost.exe.

Does anyone have a solid solution to this besides reinstalling the entire computer?

It's hard to give a definitive answer and tell you that you can just run a cure as the restrictions and / or damage imposed by the malware is not always immediately evident.

A couple of things I would try first though is run a second antimalware application. SuperAntiSpyware (SAS) is an excellent program, you can also install and run Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM) with it, they will play happily together. MBAM will detect and remove stuff SAS misses and vice versa. Of course you only run one at a time.